


A Resting Place of Water

by orphan_account



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), The Haunted - Fandom
Genre: Character Death, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, poetry references, weird healing magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 09:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19867582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Grayson and Drake find each other after four years. They are both broken and trying to heal through one another, but neither of them admits it.





	A Resting Place of Water

**Author's Note:**

> I changed some things because I wanted to see Drake use more magic in the series. I also didn't expect to ship this. Kinda grew on me though.

Grayson listens to the quiet bubbling of the fish strew Drake prepares. It settles in the drums of his ears, becoming a focal point past the silence of Drakes home. He sits on a stone ledge overlooking the sea watching as the reflections of stars dance in the waves. He's waiting for Drake to make conversation or to acknowledge him past the pleasantries and formalities they’d already been offered. 

He’d been curious as to what Drake had done in the past four years besides the magic he’d already shown him. He’d meant to ask but knew that any information Drake offered him would have to be repaid by information of his own, information he still refuses to think about. Grayson kept to small talk, and Drake returned him the favor. 

“You can look around if you want. Not much to see but it is a roof.”

_Not a home_ Grayson’s mind replied.

Grayson stands, some stones skidding against ledge underneath his hands, but never seem to touch the surface of the water, the sound too soft to rise above the boiling of fish stew. He tries to look busy, opening a few doors to peak into their rooms, touching a few of the walls to feel their texture, but he finds nothing to be any more significant than any other ruin. 

He sits beside Drake, the steam of the boiling stew heating his cheeks after the touch of seaside wind. He leans past Drake’s shoulder to take the smoke into his nostrils. The smell of the salmon is overridden with the smell of burning salt. 

“’s almost done. I just don’t want the fish to be undercooked.” Grayson looks at Drake and thinks that salmon could be eaten raw. Drake looks back.

“What? I don’t want to get sick.” Grayson has to stop himself from rolling his eyes. 

“How often do you make fish?” 

“Does it matter?” Drake grabs two bowls from behind him, stirring the stew a few more times before serving two uneven spoon fulls into each of the bowls.

“So never.” He gives the bowl with the most stew to Grayson. “Spoons?”

“I’ve had fish.”

“So no spoons?” Drake brings his bowl up to his lips, keeping his eyes on Graysons. His eye twitches a moment before Grayson sees his throat bob, his expression goes neutral and he tries to hide his disgust by drinking the concoction in a few more gulps. He brings the bowl down, brow liquid beading in the corners of his mouth. He waits a few seconds but eventually wipes the broth on his sleeve.

“Any good?” Grayson can’t hide his smirk. Drinks some of his own stew and forces down the mixture of salt, water, and fish chunks. 

“Shut up Grayson.”

* * *

He tries to lull himself to sleep with the whistle of the wind. It blows through the rock formations and ruins singing an unsteady song with no set key and though he tries to use it as a lullaby every time the whistling crescendos he wakes up just a little bit more until he's sitting on a stone ledge by Drake’s room. 

He can barely hear Drake breathing and though he knows it’s normal for those living in the Badlands to sleep quietly, he finds himself thinking (several times) that Drake has either died or snuck off. He peaks through the cracks in the stone to see if either answer is true, but all he can see is the subtle way Drake’s back rises and falls on the covers of his made bed. 

He leaves Drake be through the rest of the night but doesn’t leave the stone edge, where finds himself watching the sunrise. He waits until he hears the creaks of the bed or Drakes footsteps on the stone. But even when the reds and purple completely dissipate he hears nothing.

He peaks through the cracks in the wall, but Drake is no longer on the bed. In his place blankets crease around the edges of a diamond helmet, facing him, glaring in the light of the sun. 

“You spying on me?” Grayson stills, heat writhing up his neck at the thought of being caught. Drake chuckles and sits beside him, looking out to the glimmering sea. 

“I couldn’t sleep.” It was a half-truth, that Drake seemed to check, gaze locked on the bags beneath Graysons eyes.

“It took me a while to get used to it too.” Drake laid across the platform, back pressed against the cracking stone, his shirt soaking with the moss beneath him. Grayson follows. 

“You know that sound,” Drake said “It was made into the shape of the buildings, not the cliffs.”

They allowed their words to fade, the whistling and the ocean filling the silence. Neither moving to rise in spite of the goal they’d made that brought them together. And Grayson allows himself to hope that this was about more than Armen.

He couldn’t stop himself. “Why did you keep it?” 

Drake’s eyes flicked to the crack Greyson had been looking through, but nothing else in his expression changed. 

“It’s his once we find him.” Greyson could feel his throat run dry. But he couldn’t place the feeling that overtook him. Just knew that Drake made him want to look away. 

* * *

Greyson learns things about Drake. They’re usually subtle things that he remembers only from seeing them. The way he fumbles with a sword, and not with a bow, the way he starts by speaking to Greyson and ends by speaking to himself, the meaningless books he carries with him, the covers now withered from the four years they’d been parted. The way he always turns his head as though Armen is still walking in their shadows. 

Other things, they talk about. Drake has never kissed anyone. He’d never thought himself close enough to anyone to try. Grayson forces himself from asking about Armen.

Then there are the things that he knows have changed. Drake murmurs to himself when he thinks Grayson is asleep. He talks strategy and plans that need perfection. He talks of goals and food and all the things that they don’t talk about. And he talks of Armen. 

Greyson tries to listen to the shuffling in the branches or humming of crickets, but Drakes' voice becomes ingrained in his head, and his words always find their way past the noises of the Badlands.

* * *

“Do I bother you?”

They are sitting beside one another a fire tinting their cheeks with heat and flames, pink and orange. Grayson is cleaning his weapons, a sword between his hands and Armor at his feet. Drake is watching him, plucking the string on his bow, and murmuring soft spells to rekindle the fire. 

Grayson glances up from the sword he’s cleaning, “There’s always worse traveling companions I could’ve found.”

Drake stops his murmuring, the flame cracks and dims. His lips quirk at the edges, but fall before they can form a smile. “I’m serious.”

Grayson doesn’t respond immediately, instead checks the sharpness of the blade, running his finger over the edge and watching as his blood beads on the diamond surface.

Drake is watching him, eyes locked on the delicate movements of Grayson’s hands.

“I would leave if you were.” The fire cracks again, and part of the log pile falls in on it. Drake doesn’t continue his mutterings and Grayson makes no effort to keep the fire alive. The words echo in the darkness once the last flame dies.

“There’s tolerance.” Once again Armen’s name lingers in their words, a tether between them neither wishes to directly touch. 

He can’t stop himself, “There’s friendship.” 

* * *

They stop at a lake, it’s hidden behind a line of trees, the brush thick enough that it touches the water. There are lights that beam out of the water when it’s touch glimmering as though there were diamond shards below the surface. They fill their bottles and as the sun disappears past the line of trees they take turns bathing in the lake. 

Greyson goes first, leaving all of his clothes on a dry rock. He jumps into the water before he can change his mind, the cold like small pricks of ice against his skin. The water around him browns almost immediately the dirt and grime coming loose from something other than sweat. He runs his hands through his hair and over his body as fast as he can and jumps out of the lake even faster. He wraps himself in all the clothes he has and curls into his sleeping bag for the warmth it provides. Drake wincing the entire time.

“That bad?” Grayson tries to shrug, but his shivering ruins the movement.

“It’s a little cold.”

“A little you’re shivering.” He sits next to Grayson draping a blanket over his shoulders. 

“I’m not going in that.”

“You smell like shit. And I have to sleep next to you.”

“You’ll be far enough away it’s not like we’re sharing a sleeping bag or anything.”

“You look like shit.” 

“Don’t look at me.”

“Get in the river. Just a few seconds then you can warm yourself by the fire.” They stare at each other, waiting until one breaks the eye contact.

“Fine.” 

* * *

Grayson hears Drake’s night terrors. He isn’t sleeping because of the noises around them, the shadows that lilt in the corners of his eyes. He sees the exhaustion in Drake, the way his shoulders curved when Grayson had laid the blanket over him, in the way his eyelids would drop, and murmurings would quiet. Drake tries to stay awake, but before they finish preparing their fish, Drake falls asleep against Greyson’s shoulder. Warm breath kissing the lobe of Grayson’s ear.

He doesn’t move Drake immediately, he finds comfort in the warmth of a body pressed against him, in the soft hair touching the hollow where his neck and his shoulder meet. For once the name Armen isn’t hung between them.

But eventually, he’s pulled away. A nightmare lingers on the surface of the lake. Completely still, it’s face cloaked in the darkness of its form. 

It only moves when Grayson turns towards it. Its head tilts up and the next time Greyson blinks the lake is empty. 

He tries to keep Drake asleep, shifting away from him as subtly as he can, lifting him as gently as he can and lying him on his sleeping bag as softly as he can. And Drake remains asleep. 

Grayson takes his sword and walks around the perimeter of their camp, checking all of their traps and fail-safes to find that not even the dirt had shifted. He checks the sigils Drake had placed, finds all of them still alight on the bark of the trees. 

He returns to the camp and finds Drake muttering and whimpering in his sleep. The blanket Grayson had placed over him thrown next to the embers of their fire, his sleeping bag atop it. 

Drake is lying in the dirt, his damp hair and clothes creating mud beneath him, brown streaks across the pale part of his face, and hair sticking in clumps. His eyes are glowing, and the dark areas of his skin were emitting a haze of faint purple.

Grayson leans next to him, shaking Drake until he dimmed and opened his eyes. The energy leaving his body, and it's as though his dreams had been ones of peace.

“Did I fall asleep?” Grayson looked to the embers of their fire opting Drake to follow his gaze. 

Greyson knew what he’d have to do. There was embarrassment etched in the lines of Drakes' face, ones that he could take for himself if he asked just one question. “Could you sleep next to me?” 

Drakes expression shifts to one of relief and Grayson knows he did the right thing. “Guess I have to. Mine needs to be washed.” They settled into the same sleeping bag, Greyson running his hand through the cold mud trying to keep himself awake, but the warmth of Drake pressed against his back lulled him to sleep. The soft breathing chasing away the dreams of his wife, and his kids, and their bodies.

* * *

Greyson wakes first and thinks to rekindle the fire with wood he finds at the edges of their camp. It’s cold in the morning, and he feels that it will be cold the rest of the day. The clouds that loom over them are heavy and gray, and the air leaves moisture on his skin. 

When he holds a match on one of the logs it refuses to burn. He gives up and sits beside the fire pit, Drake moving his own head to rest in Greyson’s lap. He strokes his hair as he waits for him to wake up.

Drake begins his murmurings, looking at the fire pit and lifting his hands so they’re held as though a fire had already been started. Flames dance through the wedges his fingers until they reach his fingertips, where they jump to the logs, their flames growing to engulf the entire pit in spite of their dampness. He sits beside Greyson so their calves are touching.

“We’re going to have to stay here another night.” There’s exhaustion in Drakes' voice, Greyson can see bags under his milky eye. “It’s dangerous to move in a storm.”

“You’ve been using too much magic.” 

Drake stiffens. “It’s fine.” Greyson cups Drakes's dark cheek turns him so he can see the purple eye. The glow it usually emits is gone and it’s shutting the longer he stares. Drake pulls away and looks towards the lake, away from Greyson.

“We have to get you back to your home.” 

Drake doesn’t respond. He leans down, to his bag, taking a moment to unzip it and mutter something that sounded like a spell. _A key,_ Drake had once told him, _doesn’t require magic, but words to open a vault in the fabric of reality_. He reaches into the backpack and after a few seconds, Greyson can see diamond exiting the bag. Armen’s helmet.

Drake holds it with the delicacy he handles magic, his finger rubs a spot of dirt off the place that would have touched the ear and sets it in his lap, now turned to face Greyson.

“Feel it.” He leans over to take Greyson’s hand, pulls it so it rests on the forehead of the helmet.

A shock runs from the helmet to his skin the moment his palm is flush against its surface. He looks up at Drake, whose expression hadn't changed, whose fingers are still resting on his. 

He holds his hand against the helmet the next time, ignoring the pricking his feels. 

“Magic.” He says as Drake lets go of his hand. When he looks at his skin, nothing is amiss, the same lines where they’d always been, the same color in spite of the feeling, but there are no scars, none of the ones he’d gotten from battles or adventures, they are the hands of a Greyson he can’t remember. 

Drake nods, touching the helmet himself. 

It’s not the same as when Greyson touches it. He doesn’t seem in the least bit uncomfortable and still do the scratches and cuts mend. 

A light forms under his hands, burning so bright that Greyson has to turn his eyes away. Both of Drake’s begin to glow, in the vivid colors of purple and white, heat melting the pellets of snow beginning to fall. 

It takes a few minutes, but the light and the heat eventually fade, and Drake takes his hands from the helmet. He’s dazed and his hands are shaking, but he manages to gather himself and look back at Greyson, with eyes that look fully rested. 

There're white handprints left on the helmet, the lines of Drakes' hands, his scratches and cuts and scars Greyson never knew about, left imprinted. But they fade the edges growing darker until there is nothing but a white scratch that hadn’t been there before.

* * *

“Annabelle Lee.” 

“What?”

“The key.” They are walking when Drake speaks, the terrain of the forest cutting their words short, and forcing them to breathe more than they speak.

“Who’s Annabelle?” There’s silver peaking through the green of the brush spilling onto their path. Drakes' head is down, watching the dirt before their feet.

“You read poetry?” He thinks of the last poem he’d read, not an intricate one that ran through loops and patterns of words he didn’t get, but one with two lines that ended rhyming with “cat”.

“Yes.” Drake grabs a stick from the brush, jams it into a part of the brush. The stick snaps, silver teeth trapping leaves and vines between them locking one half of the stick on its scale. It’s loud, and Greyson mutters _Jesus_.

“No. You don’t.” Drake looks at the end of the shorter stick he’d created and throws it into the trees.

“Okay, so Annabelle Lee is a poet? A writer?”

“Try a poem.” He tries to find something familiar in the name, but his thoughts produce nothing. Drake looks back at him and understanding seems to dawn on his face.

“So that her highborn kinsmen came 

And bore her away from me, 

To shut her up in a sepulcher 

In this kingdom by the sea.”

“It's a story.” Drake stops, Greyson behind him. He seems to ponder this. 

Greyson reaches out to touch his shoulder, but before he raises his hand Drake speaks. “It’s just a key.”

* * *

The wood of the home they find is far too pristine to be thousands of years old. But the way that Drake touches the door and the furniture is no way Greyson had seen anyone touching anything other than their own home.

There are holes in the roof, places where vines have grown into the wood, windows have been shattered, dead apples lie all over the floor. 

The basement is worse, all loose dirt and stones and a door that leads to the start of everything. Drake has to sit at the last stair to make it down in the basement, and when they walk the dirt shifts and fills their boots.

They try to level it, to make the dirt even enough that Drake is able to draw a teleportation rune, but by the time he’s done, he’s drifting and Greyson has to put him into his bed. 

That night is the first night he ever doubts Drake. 

* * *

When Drake has been asleep for more than a day, Greyson begins to worry. He tries to stay awake, repeating the poem to himself, dipping his face in water, holding his had over open flame. But after the second night passes with no whimpering or talking he knows something is wrong.

His eyes are falling, and when his fingers brush Drake’s forehead the feeling is only registered through a haze he can’t seem to knock away. But it’s cold and he knows Drake isn’t supposed to be that cold.. 

He moves his fingers below Drakes' nose, but feels nothing, he touches the space between his two collar bones, nothing, his wrist, nothing, his neck, nothing. 

He climbs on top of Drake, uses his joined hands to restart his heart, he does all of the things he knows he should do. He kisses Drake. 

But nothing works. There’s still nothing when he touches his neck. Nothing when he begins to beg to Drake. Something he’d never done. Not even with his wife and his kid. 

There's humming that comes from Armens' room, a soft light that glows on the fabric of Drake's bed. He lifts his head to see Armen standing in the doorway. 

His white eyes are glowing, it’s the first thing that Greyson sees, the second is how little he’s changed from four years ago, how his hair is the same length, how there are no new scars, how he hasn’t aged. But all Drake can think is how he doesn’t remember the color of Armen’s eyes. 

_He’s dead_ , It’s Armen’s voice, but it rings in his head, scraping the inside of his skull, and making his eyes water. He shakes his head.

_His magic isn’t dead. But he is._ He can’t help but believe Armen, can’t help but belive the tears spilling from his eyes.

_More parts of me will allow the helmet will heal him_. Greyson’s holding Drakes' hand, his nails digging into the skin, so crescents form on his wrists. 

_He won't come back otherwise._ There’s something that wants him to reject the deal, to leave Drake to rest, to leave Armen, who couldn’t possibly be Armen, with Herobrine. But he feels the skin pulse beneath him, feels the magic that runs through Drake, and he can’t throw even this small chance away. 

He nods, and a smile that isn’t Armens plays over Armen’s lips.

He walks over to Drake, takes the hand Greyson had been clinging to and brings it to his lips. He mutters something and Drake’s milky eye begins to glow through the eyelid, some of the black skin receding.

It’s quick and the next time Greyson blinks Armen is gone. 

He scrambles to get the helmet, muttering the Poem as fast as he can, but when the helmet emerges, it’s more white than it is diamond. 

He ignores it and thrusts it below Drakes' hands. It’s dim, but the helmet begins to glow underneath his palms, and his skin seems to become more radiant. But it doesn’t last even half as long as it had at the lake. The glow stops beneath his hands. 

The helmet starts to glow again, the light starting at the base, where Drake’s hands aren’t, and there’s a moment when he thinks that the helmet will start to work again, but instead, the helmet shatters, blue dust spilling over both their hands.

* * *

They empty the dust in the lake where Greyson had first seen the helmet. They slit their palms and take handfuls, letting it slip through their fingers as though it were fine sand rather than sharp diamond, blood forming clumps that echo when they hit the surface of the water. 

Neither sheds a tear, both stare, as the dust sinks into the water, shimmering when moonlight kisses it. There are fish that rise to the surface and eat the blood and dust. Disappearing after the fins leave ripples in the water.

Greyson touches Drake’s cheek, blood smearing on the skin that is more human than ender, and Drake leans into it, bringing his own hand so their fingers intertwine. His skin is still cold, and he can see the milky eye glows brighter. Greyson closes his eyes and hears sobbing. 

**Author's Note:**

> I really want someone else to write for this fandom. I'd be so happy.


End file.
